Black Lace, Iron Crowns, and Red Waves
by Lore55
Summary: Reborn into a land ruled by kings, three uncommon criminals are scattered across the winds. Westeros will never be the same. Rating may go up. These are not good people. Stark OC, Targaryen OC, Joffery is replaced by an OC.
1. Act 1 : Scene 1

There is a ghost at Winterfell.

Or, that's what Anne assumed she was. A ghost, trapped in the body of a girl.

Lyanna Stark was born in Riverrun but she has been raised in Winterfell. Maester Luwin and her mother will tell the story still, of the pair of children conceived on the wedding night of their parents, a Tully boy and a Northern girl. A little lady, first born and frighteningly quiet, but alive, and a little lord, screaming his lungs out. Lady Catelyn will remember fondly their trip to the north, and how sweet and quiet Lyanna was, while Robb wailed at the crack of every twig.

How she had taken to the cold more quickly than her brother and mother both, and how fussy she got if ever Robb was left out of her sight.

Sometimes Anne wondered what her parents had done to deserve her. Catelyn, honorable, loyal, proud, and honest. Ned, dutiful, loving, just and fair. They were good people, kind people, people who would uphold the King's justice and do as their duty required them.

Anne was, simply put, none of those things.

She knew herself to be shrewd, cunning, and when need be cruel. She never revelled in the cruelty but she knew, to get what she wanted sometimes she had to drown her heart.

Sometimes, she thought herself more Tully than Stark, even though Robb got the red-brown hair and the blue eyes ,she follows their words closely, has had them carved into her heart for a lifetime already.

Family, duty, honor.

Family comes before duty and honor, and Anne has all of them, though perhaps not the kind her father and her brother and her mother keep inside of them. Hers is a thieves honor and the code that goes with it, as old as the sands in the desert and the snow in the mountains.

_Never con an honest or an innocent. _

_Help your fellows._

_Teach the children, but only the clever ones._

_Your word only matters to your own people. _

_Provide and protect for your own. _

_Shield your tongue and watch your back. _

_Accept judgement only from your own. _

_Don't get caught. _

The last one was the most important, and the one she impressed most heavily on everyone that belonged to her. River had been caught, and she had turned coat in under a year. Taro had died before he'd been caught. So, too, had her brother Jasper. Jazz had been her rock, her most loyal companion and confidant. She had found him cleaved in two in a safehouse in Maine, with blood on his knife and a vicious snarl on his face. He was always fast, always a fighter. His children, four of them, lay around him with his head cut off.

And now she stands in Winterfell, a girl of six, watching her brothers fight with sword in the yard.

She had two, Robb and Jon, and she will not see them die the same was Jazz did. It doesn't matter what she has to do, how low she has to sink, but she will see them live to be old men, she will see them survive the Night King and his armies, and she will tear apart anyone who tries to get in her way. No matter who it is, no matter how high born, how noble, how golden or silver or fireproof they might be.

But for now she watches. She watches Robb block a blow from Jon and Jon sweep around to bring his sword up to fast Robb almost gets smacked in the chin with the blunted practice weapon. She watches them. Guns had been her go too, but now she doesn't have them. So she'll need to get very, very good at blades. And she is good. But shadow boxing will only get her so far.

She's going to have to fight the boys and convince her father to let her train properly. Or else it will be all for nothing.

She has plans, great plans, but they require her gathering a select few men and women into her folds and she can't act on those plans. Not yet. Not for many years. Anne is not a patient woman but she has learned it. In the time when she could not walk, in the time when she could not talk, in the time when she can do nothing, now, but wait until she no longer a child.

Anne walks forwards, as she goes snatching a practice sword from where Ser Rodrik has them standing points in the ground nearby. He's not watching the boys as carefully as he was, distracted by Maester Luwin.

The boys are shorter than her by a good two inches, and she is all legs and arms even as such a small child. They're heavy on their feet, their boots slosh in the mud and they're small and clumsy. Anne is small and clumsy but she has dance lessons and she's been practicing on long beams and bed posts as long as she could walk. She is quiet on her toes and swift on her feet.

She steps between Jon and Robb and in one swift move she knocks the swords from both of their hand, swept Robb's leg out from under him and holds Jon at sword point.

"Better watch it," she feels her mouth spread with a grin.

"You can't do that!"

"That's cheating!"

"It's not cheating if you weren't paying attention," she snarks. She lets Jon pull Robb up, then smacks both of them on the eat with the flat side of the sword. "Come on. Show me something exciting!"

"Lady Anne!" Ser Rodrik objects. "You should be with Septa Mordane, and your sister!"

"Septa Mordane is boring and Sansa is three. I don't need to know the songs about fair maids in summer or is more useful."

"A little lady doesn't need to know how to fight at all. That's what lords are for, to protect them," Roderik tried to pacify.

Anne looks dead at him. "No lords protected my aunt. Or Elia Martell or her daughter."

"Lyanna!"

She's never heard her father raised his voice before but she won't back down. She looks at him, too, steady and unnerving, her grey eyes chips of frozen steel.

"I won't end up like them. But I need to fight to be able to do it. I'm already better than Robb and Jon."

"No," he said firmly. Fiercely. There was a storm in his eyes.

"Father-"

"No. You'll not train with these boys. Put the sword down and go back to your lessons."

"But-"

"Now, Lyanna."

Anne stares up at him hard, her eyes narrowed and defiant, but she leaves. She is a child of six. She can't exactly challenge the man to a duel over her right to learn to fight.

* * *

"There is a fire in us, Dany," Jaehaerys tells her. He can only sit at the edge of the large pool while she stays fully submerged, her long hair floating around her slim shoulders. She has always taken the heat better than him. He told her once it was the dragon in her blood.

"A fire?" she finds herself repeating. Her elder brother likes to speak in riddles. He is cryptic, if honest, and she finds the good humor in his lilac eyes a comfort.

"Yes," Jaehaerys, who insists she call him Jazz, motions her closer and Daenerys sink over until he can rub oils into her hair for her. "A fire. It can be a good thing. Fire brings change, and warmth. Fire can be love ,if you let it. But you must be weary, sweetling. Fire can just as easily consume, and if it consumes you you may never be as you once were. This fire resides in our hearts. We love fiercely, and we hate harshly. We must always be mindful that we don't vanish into the fires. Do you understand?"

Daenerys didn't think she did, not really, but she nodded anyways. Let her brother comb the scent of lavender into her hair. Their small house in Lorath, something that Jazz called a 'bolthole' served them well when the Usurpers knives got too close.

Viserys was already sleeping in the top bunk of the bed and Jazz shared, set across the wall from the cott alloted to Dany. He is sixteen, and tall. His shoulders are slim and his hands are quick. Dany has seen him lift a purse from a man without ever looking at him.

Viserys tells her that it's wrong, that they were blood of the dragon and they should not have to steal for a living. There is a throne waiting for them across the narrow sea. Jazz tells her that he will do whatever it takes to make sure she eats. Even if it means he doesn't.

Until last year, they had lived in a big house with a red door that Ser Willem Darry had owned. He kept them safe there, but he got sick. He'd been a big bear of a man and he'd roared and fought all of her servents but Dany thought that he loved her. He called her 'little princess' and she missed his house, the one with the red door. She'd had her own room and she didn't have to share with her brothers, who both smelled worse than her.

Jazz told her it was because they were men, and no matter how much their showered it would come back until they were truly full grown, but for the time being he scented himself with old spices.

After Willem Darry had died, wasting away in his bed, Jaehaerys had broken one of the servants noses and threatened to gut them before he started rounding up anything of value. Gold, silver, bronze, and jewels, he spread them between packs that he passed between each of the three of them. Then he picked eight lemons from the tree by Dany's window and sold the big house and its red door.

They had been on the move ever since. Dany didn't know how many boltholes he had across the free cities, or how much money they had but they didn't go hungry. A little cloth bag lay on her folded clothes, filled with sixteen lemon seeds from her tree. Jazz promised that one day they would stop having to run and she could plant her seeds.

Dany didn't think that it would be any time soon, but when Jazz made a promise he kept it.

Dany let him lift her out of the near-boiling water and wrap her up into a thick wool robe. Jazz brushed out her hair and sang her a song in soft, deep voice before he put her to bed. She wanted to stay up and see what he was doing at his desk in the corner. But she couldn't. Her eyes were too heavy and the blankets were warm and before she knew it she was asleep, listening to the scratching off a quill on parchment,

* * *

Strange as it might have been, Quinton Taro did not hate the girl who killed him.

To be fair, it is very difficult to hate one's own and only daughter. Blood may have been thick, yes, but their was the blood of the covenant and it was thicker than the water of the womb. Thicker than the water that bound him to Cersei Lannister.

She loved him. Loved him like no one had before, and it was strange. Unnerving, even. He was older than she was when he was born, but she was his mother, technically. And she loved him. She loved him so much he thought he might be smothered by his mother's chest as he held him there as a baby. Even as he grew and she let him walk and eat solid foods it's… strange. She wants to protect him, and that's more than his first mother ever did.

He thinks he loves her, but he would gladly give up his throne to his sister, still just a small bump in his mothers belly. Quinton knowns himself. He knows he's not the type to be a ruler, or a leader. He'd a killer, an enforcer, he can plan and strategize but he's shit at command. He's an old soldier to take his orders, and that's all.

He has no place being the king.

All that said, he's pretty fucking sure he'll be a better one than his father.

His father, who is not yet so fat he needs stairs to get on a horse, but who beats his mother and rapes her in the night.

If he gets the chance, and he will get the chance, he'll kill him. Someway. Some quiet way. A hunting accident gone wrong. Too much to drink and he chokes on his own vomit. He doesn't care.

If he was bigger than a goddamn three year old, if he had the magic he once did for murder, he would do it as he was riding off to war with the Iron islands. A fall off the house and his neck snaps. Easy. Simple. He's a fan of simple, but that is not an option he has just yet.

He can't kill any king until he can lift a knife without his mother snatching it away from him in fear.

"I hope he doesn't come back," he says quickly. Too quiet for anyone but his mother to hear as she holds him close to her, feet off the ground, watching the King ride off for another war. It's been barely six years since the last one. Quinton has never liked war, and that before the only medicine available amounted to opium and hack saws.

A firm hand on his head guids it against her shoulder. His 'uncle' Jaime stands close enough he might have heard, but no one else.

"Hush, my love. You don't mean that," his mother soothed.

"I do," he told her solemnly. "He's not a good man. The other king wasn't either."

"That's enough talk of that," she said sternly, and he fell silent. He wasn't stupid.

He looked at Jaime. All green eyes and golden hair, like his mother. Like he himself. No, Quinton is not stupid. There's no match up that says mixing Roberts pitch black hair and blue eyes, both more dominant than blond and green, will result in him. The chances are slim to none, and there's no one else in the Red Keep that disappears behind closed doors with his mother.

It's disgusting, it's wrong, and this whole world is fucked to shit.

Though if he's being honest, he could fuck his own mother some day and it still won't be the worst thing he's ever done.

Maybe, just maybe, this was some kind of karma for a lifetime of crime.

Jokes on the gods. He has no intention of being seeking redemption, or paying penance. He has one goal now, and he could deal with the rest afterwards.

Kill King Robert.


	2. Act 1 : Scene 2

Anne stabbed the needle into the thick calico cloth, her grey eyes brewing with a storm. Thick pink cotton outlined a simple direwolf's head on the cloth, and in the center she stitched together through the thick calico stretched taut across her hoop. The grey wool ticks through, leaving small stitches in its place until the couching is done and her cordonnet is in the shape if a snarling wolf. It's still messy, this small body is not as graceful as her old one, her coordination is still something she's working on.

Anne switches her needle and her thread and started stitching slowly between the outline, drawing tight, neat threads together. Over and over, she imagined that she was stitching it into flesh again, the way she had in the days of old. She thought of her Death Dealers, her killers who wore her marks with such pride. None were quite the same and all bore her distinctness.

She had picked each of them out, The most talented, the most loyal, those most deserving. Quinton Taro, River Kelly, Chick Bradshaw and a scant dozen others. Those who wore her lace were known. The most deadly, the most dangerous people in the world. And they were hers. Hers and no one else's.

Now she has noone.

She does not have her Death Dealers, she does not have Jazz or his children. She does not have Taro and his daughter.

Her father and Robb have an army, the bannermen of the North, who will not answer to her unless every man in her family is dead and even then, it's debatable. They wouldn't listen to her without question, not the way her others had.

It's infuriating, and she pours that fury into the image in front of her. Into the wolf. Snarling and grey she stitches her anger into every knot until it it finished.

The scissors are wicked sharp as she carefully clips through the tacking that held it in place on the hoop. In the end she has a small lace wolf, sitting on her hand. It's not her best work, but her fury has faded, sealed in the intricacies of the lace.

Lace had been a part of her for a long, long time.

Their family had been strict, hers and Jazz. She wasn't allowed books that weren't approved, she was allowed to play kickball and she always had to sit out in gym class. She was sick, her mother had said. Her and Jazz both, sickly and weak children. They'd been put in front of old books and sat in only the smallest bit of sunlight. She was allowed to touche only the dullest of needles, none of them able to prick her precious fingers.

How far she had come from that.

They weren't sick, in the end. Neither of them. But if they thought they were, if they felt like they were, if they looked pale and thin and shaky, then their mother could control their lives forever. Dress them like dolls.

Her mother was the first person that Anne Reed had ever killed.

She did it for her brother. She did everything for her brother. Jazz was her whole world for the twenty years it took to take control of her life and the lives of everyone around them. Her brother, and Taro.

Now her world had expanded. Now it included four brothers, two sisters, a mother and father who loved her very much but who chafed at the idea of her fighting. Of her following the path of her namesake.

In the calm that bloomed after she lay all of her anger into the lace she recognized it for what it was. An attempt to protect her.

But Anne did not need protection. She was already subject to a patriarchal society that would expect her to marry a rich and high and settle back to being a lady of a house. Not really in charge, just a pretty trinket an someone who might have influence but only through her husband's voice.

Anne wasn't interested in that. She would be sit back in silence for no one.

By right of succession, she should be heir of Winterfell. But because she didn't have a dick she was, instead of first in line, fourth. Maybe fifth. There were certainly those who would sooner see a bastard as Warden than her as Wardeness.

She should be heiress but she was not. She should be fighting but she was not.

The world was going to change, and not for the better. She needed to be strong before that time came. Not this small girl of six, with no power of her own.

Her door opened.

She looked away from the little wolf in her hand. Eddard Stark stood in the doorway. His long grey cloak hung across his shoulders, though no true Stark ever felt much cold. Eddard's face was long, framed by a close trimmed beard and long brown hair, half tied back.

It was not hard to see where she got her looks from. She had the same hair but darker, so brown it was almost black. Her eyes were the same shade of grey, stormy and intense. From her mother, she got little. A slim frame. High cheekbones.

"Anne," he said, and she had to wonder if he had chosen the nickname because he could not bear to say 'Lyanna' on the regular. "We should talk."

"Unless you're about to say 'come outside and pick up a sword' I don't want to hear it," she said flatly. She lay the wolf on the table near her. She was not angry, but she was still right.

"I'm not saying that," he told her, "Lyanna, you're a Lady of House Stark. You have to behave in a way that is… fit, for such a title."

"Like Sansa?" she asked archly. "You want me to pretty little doll to impress all the lords and ladies, and when I'm old enough you'll sell me to whomever you believe will be the best fit."

"You can't believe that," Ned looked hurt. Anne wanted to pull her words from the air as much as she wanted to spit more fire and acid into his face.

Instead she bowed her head, looking at the pale blue of her dress. A winter dress, though it is still autumn. The Stark words always come true. Winter is coming.

"Anne," his voice softened enough that she looked back up at him. His face had softened, concern creasing him and replacing his grief and anger. "I will make a deal with you. When the time comes for you to marry, you may decide, that if he is not noble or kind or good, you may deny the match. I cannot promise you can marry for love, but I can promise you your choice. And you must promise to relinquish this idea of sword fighting."

Anne narrowed her eyes at him. She mulled his words over. Finally, she nodded.

"If you promise that we wait until I'm as old as mother was. That I not marry until I'm seventeen, and that we do the same for my sisters. And I'll never ask Ser Roderik or you, or any other man to teach me to use a sword." She picked her words carefully. Made sure that it would be easy to slip through the cracks of them. Not a man but maybe a boy, or a woman. Not a sword but perhaps a spear or a knife or a bow.

Ned Stark, honorable, true Ned Stark dissolved into a smile and placed a large hand on her dark hair.

"That's my girl," he soothed. "The King has summoned me south to stop a rebellion from the Greyjoys. I shall return as soon as I am able. Until then, mind your mother and watch over your brother."

Anne leaned in to hug him, ignoring the sting of guilt that came from lying at her father. What ever did her parents do to deserve her?

* * *

Jazz tapped his heels lightly against the side of the horse, sending it into a swift canter. Dany, sat before him in the thin Volantese saddle, let out a whoop of joy. She threw her little hands into the air, almost smacking him in the face, and waved them in the air.

The horse, a small mare that he had won in a game of dice, was a beautiful red with a mane the color of wheat. Her gait was smooth and even, perfect for long distance riding and her temperament was gentle. At his side Viserys sat unsteadily in the strange saddle. The Volantese, and indeed many in Essos, had saddles with low pommels and short stirrups. They were very different from the ones in Westeros, designed for knights and lance warfare. In Westeros the cantle's were high to brace a knight on when he charged to kill, the stirrups were long down so he was standing in the saddle more than he was sitting.

During their time with Ser Darry they had all stayed within the high manse walls, safe from prying eyes but in a cage. In their own gilded dragon pit. Sometimes, when Dany was napping, Jazz had smuggled Viserys out a servants exit, drawn a hood across his silver hair and taken him out to see the streets.

He showed him beggars and magicians, and pickpockets and taught him about how Rhaegar had taken him from the Red Keep like this growing up, and Jazz would dance while Rhaegar sang and they would buy their dinner with the coin they earned.

Now, outside the manse for the first time in Dany's young life they moved from one bolthole to the next. Jazz would let them stay no longer than two months time, enough time for word to reach the capital of where they were before they moved again.

Jazz procured money. From working odd jobs, to lifting purses, to gambling. Whatever it took to protect his brother and his sister.

Viserys dreamed of retaking their homeland and killing Robert Baratheon for what he'd done to their father.

Jazz, who was a king by their mothers words alone, would take back the throne if he could. He would tear them out, root and stem, but not for a desire to rule and not for vengeance for his brother, his father, and sweet Elia, but for the safety of his sister and his brother.

He wanted them to be safe, he wanted them to have stability. The throne would not give it to them but it would end the assassins on their tail.

Jazz made certain that Dany never saw them. She was young an innocent and precious. He did his best to protect Viserys as well, but he was older, a teenager now and a tempermental one at that. He was not as much of a fool as Jazz had feared he would be. He had a tenency towards anger, but Jazz did not see it as the same as their father's had been. Not yet.

Jazz gave the mare the reigns and they swept through the green grass, Viserys shouting at their backs. They moved smoothly, burning across the fields besides a stream the bubbled and burst at their side. Viserys struggled to keep up with them on his small dun, laid down with their luggage. They travel light, but in the next city Jazz will get them a good sturdy pack horse, so they can keep more than just the bare essencials with them. As it is they had food, enough money for a modest house, and the clothes on their backs. Mother's crown is safe in Valon Therys, it is one of the few things that Jazz was unwilling to sell.

Jazz didn't pull them to a stop until they came unto a split in the stream.

He dismounted and caught Dany when she slid off of horse so he could set her in the grass while he went to refill their water skins. Viserys caught up with them, looking dishevelled and agitated.

"You could have waited for me!" he scowled at him and slung down, almost falling flat on his ass. Jazz shot him a smile and went back to the river.

"Clean your hands, V. We'll have lunch before we go on our way," Jazz told him. "Dany! Don't wander so far!"

She had all but disappeared in the tall grass. They were getting bit too close to the Dothraki Sea, and the grass was almost as high as her head. Still, he could see the silver of her hair waving above the green stalks as she chased a dragonfly along the banks.

The sound of hoofbeats made him look up, and what he saw made his head sink.

"Dany!" he called again, voice sharp enough to draw the childs attention. He rarely raised his voice, but a pair of Dothraki on horse back were riding towards them. They brandished no arakh's and sounded no war like shouts. Still, Jazz touched one of the knives hidden in his sleeve.

The little girl came running back to her brothers. Viserys stood by the horses, his lilac eyes huge as he watched Dothraki aproach. One was a short man who wore no vest and had tanned dark in the sunlight. The other was younger, Jazz's age if not a couple of years younger still. His braid was already long and his dark eyes were intense as the pair of them aproached.

"_Hello_," Jazz nodded to them. He had made a point to learn as many of the languages spoken in Essos as he could, while he could. He knew High Valyrian, Low Valerian, and the bastard tongue sprouted from it. He knew trade talk, and he knew Dothraki, though his accent was horrible.

"Y_ou are a long way from home_," the smaller man said, looking them over.

"_Exiles from Westeros. I am Jazz, this is my brother, Sery, and my sister, Dany. Who speak to I?" _

The younger man cracked a smile.

"_I am Cohollo. This is Drogo." _

Jazz drew his shoulders back. Drogo. His eyes flickered to the young man. The future Khal. "_Son of Bharbo?_"

"_You know me. You know more than many foreigners._ "

"_I like to think so. What brings you so far from the Dothraki Sea? There is no Khalasar that I have seen._"

"_We travel, to the Rhyone. You do not need to know why._"

Well, Jazz couldn't argue with that. Cohollo was right, he didn't need to know. Probably, he didn't _want _to know. While they were talking Dany slipped out of the grass and walked right up to Drogo's stallion. They were smaller an swifter than the draft horses employed by knights and used in western war, but still much bigger than a five year old girl. His stomach turned with fear.

"Dany," he warned, but she was unpurturbed. She marched right up to the horse, that leaned down to see the little slip of a silver haired girl.

"_We came because I saw ghost grass. But it was only a girl_," Drogo spoke and his voice was not low like a mans yet. He really was young. Had his father even died yet?

Dany touched the war horses soft velvet nose and blew into it, like Jazz had taught her a few months ago. In return the horse blew into her face, so hard he almost knocked her to the ground. But Dany stood tall and started talking to the horse, in Old Valerian of all things.

Drogo looked down at her and a small, phantom smile appeared on his face.

"_Will you eat with us, Drogo and Cohollo?" _Jazz offered. "_What is our is not our for yours." _

Jazz wasn't totally sure what he said, but it was enough to make Cohollo laugh at his clumsy Dothraki. Drogo denied him though, and took nothing from them nor started any fight. He stayed still long enough for Dany to finish petting the forelock of his stallion before they left them be.

Jazz almost collapsed from relief.

Both of those Dothraki warriors could have killed all three of them without trying. Viserys was not much for a sword, and Jazz was a diplomat as opposed to a true warrior. He had always been a temper for Anne. He knew people and she knew bodies. He knew mind and she knew blood. But now there was no one could balance him.

His was tilted.

There always had to be a balance. And Jazz had none.

* * *

Though his mother was loathed to his affections the fact of the matter was Quinton, Joffrey, or whoever the fuck he was adored Tyrion Lannister.

The Imp was now only a foot or so taller than Quinton/Joffrey/whoever-the-fuck. He was not a handsome man, not the way Joff had always like them with their fine features and sharp smiles. All the same, he was not ugly either. His brow was defined and well pronounced, his nose was small, and his limbs were far too short for his torso and his head.

Joff liked his eyes. His mother thought they were unnerving, but Joff like the black and the green struck together. He wondered if anyone here knew how heterochromia worked, and if they're told him he'd eaten a twin in the womb.

That would be fucked up.

He didn't ride much, instead preferring to travel by wheelhouse or litter or something to the effect. It made it hard to sneak anywhere or go about discreetly. So when he arrived from Casterly Rock into Kings Landing several months into the Greyjoy rebellion Joff was already in the yard waiting for him.

Sandor stood over him, a grim shadow at eighteen with a horrific scar. Joff was sure that regular toddlers would weep at the sight of him. Joffrey, contrarily, told him his helmet was pretty when they first met and asked if he could see clouds from his height.

Hateful little fucker or not, he was still pretending he was a three year old.

When the litter came to a halt in the courtyard and Tyrion walked out on a little step ladder Joff went running to embrace him kind, clever uncle. Both of his uncles were kind, though one of them was really his father. His mother was kind to him, and she would be kind to Myrcella and Tommen as well, but no one else. Her love was reserved for her children.

"Uncle!" he cheered. It felt good, to be filled with joy.

If he was lucky, Robert Baratheon would die in the rebellion and they would be over and done with the Fat King's reign.

Joff didn't know what the hell he would do as a king, but if Robert died then his mother wouldn't get beaten. The Lannisters could hold the kingdom. Stannis wouldn't press for the throne if no one told him that he was a bastard, and Renly had a poor claim and, in any case, adored Joff who had once called Lord Crakehall a 'homophobic cunt' to his face.

It was largely dismissed as a mispronunciation of a two year old, and Lord Crakehall went on his way, but Renly thought it was the best thing he'd heard in years.

"Nephew!" Tyrion hugged the little boy to him. "You're getting so tall! Soon you'll be as tall as your father."

"But less Fat!" he laughed, pulling away. "How were the roads? How is the fighting?"

"The roads are awful and the fighting is worse. Where is my sister, the queen?"

"Mama stayed inside. Jon Arryn is holding court while the king is fighting. She's with him. Jon Arryn says she should wait in the Keep but Mama won't. Is Grandpapa mad?"

"My father is furious, after the razing of Lannisport."

"Is he gonna kill the Greyjoys? Or only some? Or just the king?"

"Knowing my father he will likely kill as many as he can, and knowing _your _father he will likely do the same. Ned Stark might keep the bloodshed to a minimum though."

Another thing that Joff appreciated about Tyrion was he didn't treat him like a child. Oh he teased him, and laughed at him, but he talked to him as a small person, not someone incapable of thought or understanding the world around him. And to the rest of the world Joff must have seemed like a intelligent, if not temperamental child.

Funny for a guy who never graduated high school.

"My father is very good at killing," Joff said sagely. He did not tell him that he was good at killin too. Or that he had been, as Quinton Taro. Being a hitman renown across the world was very different from being a prince. Fuck all knew what it would be like to be a king in comparison.

Where was Anne when he needed her?


	3. Act 1 : Scene 3

Anne was sitting her mothers solar, going over the days expenses in the big book of sums spread out across the table. Catelyn was hard at work balancing the expenses of war with the need to finish filling the grainery and call all of the vassels into castles proper for the winter.

The first men were clever. Brand the Builder knew that if he built his castle atop the natural hot springs that bubbled underneath the earth he could run hot pipes through the walls and heat the castle even in the dead of winter, when the snow fell over the heads of men and babes froze in their cradles. A result of this was not only that the people in Wintertown would flock to Winterfell as the first flurries of snow started to fly, but so too would all of the people in the neighboring villages.

Their holdfast was a veritable mecca for the people of the north when winter came, and they had to plan for it. They had to find a place to put their people, had to have food to sustain them and water inside.

Every winter that came they had hundreds of new people to house, and feed, and take care of for gods-knew how long.

Anne was already picking up on what needed to be done.

She had not grown up in a time where winter meant immediate death, or when starvation was commonplace for any but the truly impoverished, and even then it made for a fine tool of hers. Starving people would do almost anything to get food, and Anne could provide that. For a favor or two.

Here it was different. Here it was their duty to take care of them and theirs, in turn, to serve them. No one had any choice in the matter, and in terms of a social latter Anne had been born on one of the highest rungs. Which made things easier, and harder.

Anne sat on her mothers knee, watching her finish up for the day. She was growing heavier with Arya by the day, and so Anne helped her when she could. People were not inclined to trust her, being a child and all, which was going to rub her the wrong way for years and years to come.

Though Catelyn didn't know it yet, they were going to have more than one new mouth to feed by the time Ned came back, for he would be returning with another child.

Anne leaned back against Catelyn, thinking on the subject of Theon Greyjoy.

He was a traitor to her brother, his best friend. Or he would be, given the chance. A chance she endeavored to keep from being presented at all. Nonetheless, he was a traitor.

And she was left with a choice.

Find a way for his first winter in the north to be his last, or take the chance and let him grow up.

Anne was not a fan of killing children, she would have rathered made use of them, or given them to Jazz to weaponize and craft into whatever they needed them to be. But, if it had to be done it had to be done.

So, did it have to be done?

On one hand, he had also saved Bran from Osha. Saved Sansa, or Jayne, one or the other. And in his defense, he had been a prisoner since he was a child, told over and over again how grateful he should be for his imprisonment itself. He was torn between his homeland and the land that had a chance of being his home, between the North and the Iron Islands.

Unreliable, dangerous, but she could get to him before all of that set in.

On top of that…

If Anne recalled correctly, Theon had a desperate need to be wanted. To belong somewhere, with someone, when he was being pulled in half by his families.

And that, that _desperation_, of a third son suddenly made heir, stollen from his home and shoved into a frozen, frightening place-

That, Anne could use. And so the Greyjoy boy could live.

With a plan in place Anne left her mother behind and went off to find her embroidery kit.

* * *

Jazz eyed the streets outside their apartment speculatively.

They were crowded with vendors and shoppers, and shadowed by pickpockets and thieves. Regular streets, all things considered, and though he saw men that walked like Taro did and girls who moved like River, none of them were half as good and none of them were trailing the trio.

The apartment he had put coin down for sat above a bakery. It was hot, and wet, and smelled eternally like sourdough and raspberry tarts but it was cheap and unassuming, and the baker had a soft spot for little Dany and her wide lilac eyes.

They looked less out of place now, closer to blue than purple, once he'd finished combing the dye through her pale hair. It stuck like nothing else and there was no chance of it washing out. He would have to touch up the roots here and there, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Dany had been excited over the prospect of the change, barely sitting still while it set in until he let her rush off to the copper looking glass to see what she looked like.

Viserys was less happy with the new arrangement.

"We shouldn't have to hide ourselves!" he hissed, voice too low to be heard on the streets or down the stairs. Dany had run down to try and beg treats off the baker again.

"No," Jazz agreed, stirring up the bowl that held the dye, "But we do. So we shall. The best hiding is hiding in plain sight and the best lie is one that's not really a lie. Most people in Essos don't know much about Westeros, so to them we can say whatever we please, permitted it's not the truth. But a Westerosi? Much more difficult to fool. We tell them we're exiles, because it's true. We tell them we're from Westeros, because that's true too."

"Why green?" Viserys scowled at the bowl like it had personally offended him.

"It's the style of White Harbor, in the north. It draws attention away from the eyes, and Northmen are a strange bunch as is. Most will never leave the North itself, let alone the continent, so the chances of being discovered are slim. Now come here, V, and let me see your head."

"This is wrong," he said again, but sat on the chair in front of Jazz. "We shouldn't have to hide. We should raise an army and take what is ours by force, not run and hide like mice!"

"Even a mouse bites when cornered," Jazz said sagely. He dipped his hands, covered in leather gloves, into the dye and dunked Viserys' hair into it, carefully working it over. He wanted no stray strands of their dead-give-away silver. For them, it really might be death. "We have to bide our time. We have no army, and few allies in Westeros. The Dornishmen will fight with us, but they don't have the numbers to win. The Lannisters, Starks, and Baratheon will fight us to the last man, if they must. The Tyrells were loyal, and may be again. The Arryns will not be. So we must gather an army to bolster us here, in Essos."

"The Gold Company," Viserys said immediately. "They're the best."

"Mmmm. They are good, but a man who fights for gold will never fight so hard as a man who fights for love. Remember that, Viserys. Love is the strongest force in the world."

Viserys scoffed. "That's stupid."

"Is it?" Jazz tugged on a strand of his hair sharply. "It was love that started the War of the Usurper. It was love that mother died for, and Rhaegar, and Elia too. It is love that drives me to protect you and Dany. Tell me, what would you do for the two of us?"

"Anything, I suppose," Viserys closed his eyes, brows furrowing.

"Anything. Love binds people to one another, and it gives strength and weakness in equal turns. Don't forget. If you remember anything I say to you, remember this; Love is what we live for."

Viserys didn't say anything to that. Jazz didn't expect him too. He was a teenager, prone to fowl tempers and rages, and who thought that silly things like love and laughter were for songs and women. But, he listened to Jazz and that was all he could really ask, in the end.

"You're done," he announced, letting Viserys up at last. "When we leave here, we'll dye it blue, and pretend to be Tyroshi."

Like their cousins in the Golden Company that Viserys liked so much.

Viserys finally turned to look at him.

"How to we get an army in Essos to love us?" he asked at last.

"Us?" Jazz repeated, a smile flickering across his face. "It won't be easy. It will take years, and we must stay together, no matter what, understand?"

Viserys nodded, slowly. "Why must we, when _they _are off with others?"

"Because. Rhaegar knew this, so I'll tell it to you too. The Dragon must have three heads. So we three must stay together, no matter what."

"Rhaegar only had two children," Viserys reminded him. The name still sounded bitter and sorrowful on his tongue. Viserys was daddy's little boy, compared to Jazz and Rhaegar who had known what he was, and had tried to protect Viserys from the truth of it all.

"He would have had another, but Elia was of poor health. A delicate beauty."

"Dany will be pretty. Like mother was," Viserys said offhanded. Whatever grief came to him with talk of their father redoubled when he was reminded of their mother.

"She'll be prettier, and stronger. A mother of dragons."

"Who will she marry?" Viserys asked. Jazz tapped the edge of the bowl in thought.

"It is marrying brother to sister that made mother frail, and resulted in so many stillborns. The Maesters say that I almost died in the cradle, not even a full year old. Our brothers died, and Shaena was born still. "

"The dragon blood must be pure!" Viserys argued fiercely.

"The seed is strong, sweet brother. We must spread it, or we risk dying out by our own hand instead of that of the Usurper. Dany will marry another. Someone rich, or of old blood, or a powerful general. You, we'll wed to a fine lady in Westeros, with money and lands to her name."

"What about you?" Viserys asked suspiciously.

"I am spoken for, tragically."

"To whom?!"

Jazz laughed quietly at the look on his brothers face.

"Allies, V, but we mustn't speak of it. Hold your tongue on the matter for now. Information is a dangerous thing."

"You're scheming," Viserys accused.

"Of course I am. Now here," he pulled off his gloves and handed them carefully to Viserys. "It's my turn. I promise I'll tell you everything, but not yet."

"If you don't tell me, I can't help," Viserys complained. Nevertheless he took care of Jazz's hair for him.

"Sweet brother. I'm asking you to trust me. For right now, we must survive. Later, we will play a game, and win a throne, and get our lives," he promised. "Okay?"

Grudgingly, Viserys agreed.

"Okay."

* * *

Taro spun the practice sword around in his hand, a steady and pointless flair.

His body was small and weak, pudgy with puppy fat. He didn't have real muscles yet or the motor functions for much at all.

Sword. He wasn't big on them, but they were the weapon of the time. He couldn't make a gun, he wasn't a smith. And if he was being honest, he didn't really want to introduce them to Planetos. It felt like a bad idea.

If he could have he would have gone for straight hand to hand, but that was a lot harder with suits of armor than it was with jeans and occasional kevlar.

Say what you would about him, Taro was adaptable.

There were few boys in the castle his age. Almost none, if he was being honest. So he was left to shadow box until he was tall enough to reach more than the Hounds hip.

Even this young Taro had already figured out that he would never be as he once had been. He had been tall, broad and strong, not unlike his faithful bodyguard. Built like a brick wall, with a talent for violence and predisposition for vengeance. While he still had those things, he knew now that he wouldn't have his body the same way.

Joffrey was destined to be lean and tall, more fit to be a dancer than a fighter.

Taro would have to adapt to that.

His daughter, River, had been small, graceful, with a frightening power hidden in her slim body and a mercilessness that never touched on cruelty.

He wished he could see her again. He wished he could have said more to her in his last moments, as she held his dying body, a smoking gun tossed recklessly into the corner. He wished he could have lived, if only so she wouldn't have cried.

Joff thrust the sword forwards into the belly of the practice dummy. It did him no good to wish for his daughter. It did him no favors to remember his loss.

"I think you've killed him, sweetling."

Joff looked away from his straw opponent, the furrow of his brows smoothing into a smile. His mother, golden and beautiful, stood at the edge of the practice yard. She was alone, her ladies-in-waiting absent for once. Joff rushed to her, throwing himself into her skirts while she swept him up into her arms. Cersei cradled him to her, kissing the crown of his golden head.

He wondered, idly, what she would do if he dyed it crimson.

"Mama!" he looked up at her, smiling an happy. The part of him that was the child Joffrey rejoiced at his mother and the part of his that was Taro, who had lost his relationship with his mother, was happy to have a mother at all.

"Don't practice too hard. We wouldn't want you to hurt yourself," she smoothed his wildly curly hair out of his face.

"Play with me, mama?" Joff asked, wriggling out of her arms. She set him down and he grabbed up the practice sword once more.

"Alright, my sweet. What shall we play? Will you be the dashing prince, sent to rescue me from a dragon guarded tower?" she teased, her green eyes sparkling. She was loving for him, soft and kind, and Taro lived knowing that she would do anything for him at all. And he, in turn, would do anything for her. The love was unconditional.

"No way! We should play knights! And we'll go on a quest to find the Apple of Discord!"

"Joff, a woman can't be a knight," she told him gently.

He huffed, sticking his nose up. "That's stupid. When I'm king, I'll change that. But we're only playing a game, so you can be a knight in that can't you?" he turned his green eyes up at her and watched her will break entirely in face with his greatest weapon yet.

Puppy dog eyes.

"Alright. But we'll have to do it inside. Come along," she ushered him along. Joff grabbed another practice sword and ran after her, the Hound bringing up the rear in an odd parade.

Joff followed her all the way up to her royal apartments, and watched Sandor push the furniture out of the way for them.

"Hound, you'll be the cursed prince stuck in the tower," Joff commanded, ushering him to stand on a raised step where his mothers bed was. He plucked the gold circlet off of his head and pushed into the Hound hands.

"I'm not wearing this," he told him gruffly.

"Well you always tell me you're not a knight, you can't be a knight with Mother and me-"

"Mother and I," Cersei corrected mildly.

"Mother and I, so you have to be the prince. And princes wear crowns."

Sandor looked down at him, stubborn as a mule, but even he caved to Joff, with a great deal of grumbling about it.

Joff handed his mother the sword he's taken from the yard, wooden and harmless. He cocked his head when she held it like she knew how.

"You've use a sword before!" he realized, looking up at her in surprise. He remembered distinctly that on the show she had talked about not understanding why Jamie learned sword play and she didn't.

"Once or twice," she admitted. "When we were children your uncle Jamie and I looked so much alike no one could tell the difference. Not even our father. I dressed up like him and took lessons from the master-at-arms while Jamie went and played in the woods."

Joff grinned. "Then this really will be fun!"

Without more warning, he lunged and the games began.


	4. Act 1 : Scene 4

Ned Stark returned home with the first pale flurries of snow.

They chased his dark hair and settled along the beginnings of his beard, cool and familiar to him. To the child riding beside him, set in front of one of the household guard he'd brought with him for a war, it was new.

Though he was a child of ten, Theon Greyjoy was born to Pyke, with its salty spray and it wet, torrent storms. He may have seen the snow before, but nothing prepared a child for their first northern winter. Not even Northern children. His own had seen one winter already, two years long. He hoped this one would be short, as the summer had been, but there was never a guarantee.

Winterfell appeared before them, ancient and steady as the stone it was made of. The great gates opened for their party and even from a mile down the road he could see the red hair of his wife, his son, and his younger daughter waiting for him. He kicked his horse into a canter, eager to finally return home.

The entire household was out waiting for him by the time he crossed the threshhold, followed by a procession of his retainers and his new ward. Ned dismounted his horse and embraced Catelyn as soon as he was close enough. He was careful with her, mindful of the babe in her belly. Catelyn hugged him close, pressing her face into the furs of his cloak.

"I'm so glad you're safe," she told him softly.

"I promised I would return," he reminded her.

"And so you have," she let him go at last and Ned found himself mobbed with children. Robb, Sansa, and Anne threw themselves at his legs, all clamoring for his attention. Jon joined in a moment later than his siblings, when Anne yanked him by his hand into the frey.

Ned's solemn mouth twitched upwards at the sight of his beautiful children. Their clamoring and half told stories and rapid questions fell off when Ned's new ward was dropped onto the ground.

Theon Greyjoy is tall for his age, with dark hair and sea-green eyes that soak in everything around him. He had done well up until now to hide his fear, but standing in the courtyard of Winterfell he looks struck, out of his element and more like a deer than a squid.

Ned isn't sure who is more surprised when Anne, his stubborn, vicious daughter disentangles herself from his cloak and the limbs of her brothers and sister to walk purposefully up to the boy, her dark eyes not as stormy as when he had last seen her. As though a clarity had come to her in his absence.

She takes one of his hands in her and inspects the glove upon it.

"You're going to catch cold, dressed like this," she tells him matter of factly. "I'm Anne. Lyanna Stark."

"Theon Greyjoy," the boy says. There's a fragment of a smile he manages to force upon his face, and Anne, who has taken after him in his sullen looks, returns it like the winter moon.

"Theon. Come inside, it's warmer. Did you travel far? Was it a hard journey? Have you ever seen the sea before?" She tugs his arm and Theon shoots Ned a panicked look. Ned watches rather helplessly as he is pulled towards the keep, and Robb and Jon rush after their sister and their new companion, with Sansa struggling to keep up the rear, her long red hair floating a banner behind her.

"You brought another boy home," Catelyn's disaproval is clear.

"Robert asked me to keep the boy as a ward."

"As a hostage, you mean," she shoots him a look that he cannot shrink away from. It's true, whether he likes it or not. Ned is not a fan of keeping a child a hostage, but his king had ordered it and better the boy be raised in the North with him than in the South with all of their vipers and scorpions.

In any case, Anne has taken him in and he knows that her siblings will follow her lead.

Anne is the oldest, and holds a sway over the children that even Ned cannot compete with. She commands Jon and Robb, and leads little Sansa by the hand, and he has no doubt that the new babe will be no exception to the rule. Theon has no idea what he's getting into.

Ned has to wonder, privately, if any of them do.

* * *

Viserys remembered their flight from Kings Landing well.

Though he was only eight and that by a few months there was nothing that would ever replace the fear that threatened to choke him as Jaehaerys grasped his hand and helped him into the ship that would set them sail to Dragonstone, safe away from the Usurper and his armies. His father, Aerys, had been fearful for their safety and sent them away from the mainland while his eldest brother, Rhaegar, fought them in the Riverlands.

He had handed Viserys to their mother and then pulled a little girl up with them, and after her a wet nurse for the babe quickening in mothers belly. She already had a babe in her arms, a child with no hair and face like a twisted potato. Red and ugly.

The boat rocked and swayed beneath their feet and it was only his mother's strong grasp on his hand that kept Viserys upright. She drew him down into the hull and he watched the star in the sky disappear behind the firm wood of the ship. He sat, shaking with fear in the dark but he tried to be brave, to be strong like his father, brave like his brother.

It wasn't until they were settled in and the waves were crashing behind them and the sky was tuning a soft violet the same shade as Jaehaerys' eyes that the little girl lowered the hood she wore and Viserys recognized her. The shadows faded just enough for him to see her and the other's in the room with him. Two knights, and the wet nurse and her baby.

"Rhaenys!" he cried. Mother hushed his swiftly.

"No one can know she's with us," Jaehaerys told him solemnly. They were alone in the little room below deck. Only Targaryen's and two night, Willem Darry and Jon Connington. Viserys looked at Jon Connington, who his father had exiled after his failed him. But he was there, breaking rules! You couldn't break rules for a king!

Jaehaerys, Jazz, lay a warm hand on his slim shoulder. Jazz was only twelve but he was tall and fast and clever. Viserys wanted to be like him. He wanted to be like Rhaegar. He would be clever and strong like his brothers.

"Robert Baratheon is marching to Kings Landing. We're all leaving now to Dragonstone, but Jon is going to take Rhaenys and Aegon further, all the way to Essos. You must never tell anyone this, V, do you understand?"

Viserys looked between all of them, frowning. "But Jon lost the Battle of the Bells! Why are we giving a prince and princess to him?"

"Because, who would ever suspect it? Father made it public that he hates Jon now, and Jon was sent into exile. No one would give an exile the prince and princess of Dragonstone, and so that's what we're going to do. You must expect the unexpected and do what no one thinks of," Jazz told him sagely.

"But why all the way to Essos? When father wins the war, we'll go back to the Red Keep. They don't need to go so far!"

"It's safer that way," Jazz said. Not even a full year later and Viserys knew he was right. Mother died and Jazz swept him and Daenerys 'Stormborn' away while the Usurper laid siege to Dragonstone. Their fleet was crushed, their armies destroyed, their father and brother dead and Jazz was named King with mothers fine gold crown set into his silver hair.

They ran.

They ran and Viserys grew. Jazz taught him and Dany all he knew of the Seven Kingdoms and of the Free Cities. He taught them houses and peoples and histories. He showed them small magic tricks. How to make a coin disappear and reappear and how to tell a man's intent by the light in his eyes and the shadow in his jaw.

Jazz was wonderful. He was only four years Viserys' senior but he had taken upon himself to raise them and keep them safe from the hired knives and cats paws. He would do whatever it took to protect his brother and sister.

And now, with Ser Darry dead and gone and Jon Connington raising his cousins half a continent away that packed what they had and went on the move. Jazz kept them hidden, as long as he could, and Viserys wasn't sure entirely what he did to ensure their fortune, but he knew that he and Dany had never had to work for money, even when they were all but penniless.

When Jazz appeared with two new children, Viserys looked upon them with contempt. They were rattily dressed, not much older than Dany was and skinny as a stick. By now, Viserys can recognize them for what they are. Two girls, twins, with small faces the same shape as Dany's, and height stunted by hunger.

"How are we to feed them, and ourselves?" Viserys demanded, curling his lip at them.

Jazz smoothed his hand across Viserys' curly silver hair. "We've the coin for it. Calm yourself, V. This is Tish and Keladry. We're going to take care of them from now on. So be kind, won't you?"

Viserys still doesn't like it. He doesn't like that Jazz is never upfront with him, he doesn't like that Jazz hides their hair and their heritage and won't call himself what he is, a king. He wants Jazz to trust him with his plans and thoughts and secrets.

But Jazz keeps all of his thoughts close to his chest and his plans locked away in his mind.

Viserys' heart ached with the want to know more, to be trusted by his only brother. But there is a wall between us, a wall that Jazz crafted with his own hands and his own 'protection' of his siblings, and Viserys can't help thinking on it as he watches his brother speak softly to the skittish little girls, offering them food and fetching them plain clothes.

* * *

They're playing pirates when Jamie walks into the room.

He'd been directed to his sisters chambers when he asked for her, Robert already too drunk to care where he went upon their return to Kings Landing. Barristan would guard him for today, and Jamie would go to see his sister and her son, who had apparently taken to spending hours at a time locked up inside Cersei's room with only the Hound for company.

Whatever Jamie had expected to find when he walked through the door, he did not expect to see Sandor Clegane leaning against a stanchion with a few lengths of yarn draped across his arms. Joffrey, almost four now, stood in front of him with a wooden practice sword in hand, facing off against the last person Jamie had expected to see with any sword in hand.

His sister.

She swung fluidly, but not very hard, parrying with her son in an effort to do - something.

She wasn't bad. Jamie could see a natural talent under her untrained hands, and the smile on her face was the most genuine he'd seen in years. For right then she looked truly joyful and free, the way she had when they were children. Before the truth of the world and their place in it had set in and the carefree girl had been locked away by a golden crown.

Joff was small, but that same talent was in him too, along with a vicious streak that shone in his green eyes.

Truly his mothers son.

Jamie cleared his throat.

The only one who didn't jump was Joff. Cersei spun with her wooden sword in hand and Clegane took a sharp step towards the pair from where he'd been 'tied up' to the post.

"How interesting," he said drolly. That was about all he got out before he found his arms filled with both Cersei and Joffrey, their golden hair pressed up under his jaw. The tension that Jamie had been carrying since the damned rebellion had even begun. They'd only just gotten Tyrion out of Casterly Rock safely, while Lannisport was ablaze. If Jamie thought too hard on it he would smell the burning of oil and men once more.

Quickly, he pressed his nose into Cersei's hair, inhaling the thick scent of her bath oils and soaps, and the vague salt of sweat.

Joffrey squirmed into his arms, pushing the siblings away from one another and Jamie remembered himself. They weren't alone, not yet, though he longed to be.

Jamie pulled away from Cersei, taking Joffrey into his arms. He'd missed the boy desperately.

"Uncle Jamie!" He touched Jamie's cheek, where a bruise had begun to form. It was his only real injury. Everything was superficial.

"Hello Joff. Have you been causing trouble for your mother?"

Joffrey grinned. "Only when I'm the bad guy."

"He's more trouble to the Hound than he is to me," Cersei teased, tugging Joffrey into her own arms. Some days Jamie was amazed the boy had ever learned to walk, Cersei had scarcely let anyone else hold him, and she almost never let him onto the ground, so afraid was she that he would ge hurt.

"I'm an angel," Joffrey said firmly. His serious face graced into a grin. "I'm glad you're home, uncle. I was worried."

"Don't be," Jamie pet his golden hair, "I'm the Lion of Lannister, haven't you heard?"

Joffrey huffed, but relished the affection. He leaned into soft contact and affections like he was starving for them, even though he'd been surrounded by them for his whole life.

"Next time, I'll be there too," Joffrey promised. Jamie plastered a smile on his face but he prayed to the gods that the boy was wrong. He didn't want him anywhere near any battlefield, ever. Even so, he knew it was a foolish wish. Joffrey was a prince, and he was already showing himself to be too stubborn to sit and watch a battle like a king should. Too much of Jamie in him, though it would be attributed to Robert without a doubt.

"Not a for a long, long time," Cersei said fiercely.

Joffrey rolled his eyes.

"If you're going to a fierce warrior, you'll need a lot more training, Joff," Jamie picked up one of the wooden practice sword and spun it with a flair across his fingers. Joffrey, set upon the ground, grinned and grabbed his own.

Jamie didn't think about how Robert hadn't come for his wife or his child, he didn't think about what joffrey would think of that as he grew old enough to understand what it meant. He focused on the son he could not claim, facing him with vicious smile that Jamie could only attribute to his mother.

Jamie was home.


	5. Act 2 : Scene 1

The houses of the North are scattered.

Loyal, stubborn, yes they are all of these things but the Northern Houses are united only by old vows and tenacity. They do no foster each others children the way they do in the south, and that, to Anne, is foolish. It means that they are not united, as they should be, though all will swear to follow the Starks the connection isn't personal. Not the way Ned's connection to Jon Arryn is, and his love of the Eyrie with it. Not the way Robert Baratheon is loyal to Ned Stark. Its a familial bond, built beyond blood.

Anne has seen it before.

The look in Ned's eyes when he regails them with tales of Jon Arryn is the same one that once haunted the brown eyes of River Kelly, talking about her father.

For Anne, to whom true loyalty is everything and mere words will not be enough, this is a problem.

She can remember so well, that Karstarks marching. Turning back on Robb. The Boltons and their treachery. The bloody battle of the bastards.

She would not tolerate all of that.

If Anne had it her way, and she would have it her way, none of that would ever come to pass. She had no control over the south yet. She couldn't stop Lysa Arryn from killing her husband, or interfere in Little Fingers plans. She couldn't stop Robert from coming from her father, and truthfully nothing could. But the North was hers, now, and she would not allow it to fall into civil strife.

So she planted the idea.

It took a couple of years, during which time she spent more effort than she'd expected dragging Theon into her fold, but eventually she and Robb and Ned Stark took off on a tour of the north.

Two years old and Arya was already a little terror, throwing her temper tantrums and getting into everything. Bran, barely a year younger than her was bright eyed and curious little boy. Sansa, at five, was sweet and eager to please and already mastering her duties as a Lady in ways that Anne, with her strange thinking and stubborn viciousness, never could get quite right.

Right before leaving Anne made a point of hugging Theon tightly around his middle.

"Watch over the girl, won't you?" she asks, pulling back to peer up at his sea-green eyes. Theon is older and taller than her and Robb. the best archer in the keep, too, his shoulders are broad and readied. His hands, calloused, though not from rough rope work the way an ironborns aught to be. She never addresses that.

Theon rolls his eyes at her, but pats her head with a descent fondness. If nothing else, he is resigned to her antics. To her affections, despite her mothers disapproving gaze.

"I'll do what I can," he says simply. Not a real promise, but Anne knows that when she comes back he will have helped keep Arya reigns in and Sansa entertained, if only for long enough for a story or a half censored sea shanty.

Theon was, when he wasn't being a boy cocked up in his own pride, rather good with children. Anne had gentled enough that he would sit with Sansa if he was asked, or amuse Arya when she started to become too much for Catelyn. It was amazing what one could do with a frightened hostage if you showed them a little kindness and a little faith.

Thought few would ever guess it, it was, in the end, faith that had won Anne most of her most loyal followers. Faith, and truth, so hard to find in a life like hers had been. She was honest, when she could be, and honest always with those she worked directly with. You don't con your own crew, and she needed their loyalty to be full, uncracked by guarded secrets or separated by thick shields. Taro knew her every move, her every thought, and she his. Jazz could talk circles around her but she struck to the heart of matters when others fluttered like butterflies afraid to land.

There were not many butterflies in the north, she had noted early on.

Even as they, her father and brother and her rode down the kingsroad with their entourage, there were no delicate wings beating the air. No butterflies to make those oh-so-famous ripples in the winds. No stones tossed carelessly into ponds still thawing from a brief summer snow.

Only wolves, prowling towards the ruins of Moat Cailin, and beyond that the marshes and their friends that live within. It will be the first time in seven years that Ned Stark has seen Howland Reed.

The farther they go from winterfeel, and the closer they draw to Moat Cailin, where the crannogman are set to be waiting for them, the more humid it becomes. An uncomfortable heat and bone deep cold, Anne longs for the comforts of home.

But on they march, a gaggle of northmen bound for the farthest south she had any intention of going. She wanted nothing to do with the Iron Court, and its vipers nest of disloyal, treasonis snakes. Not unless she was going there to declare Norther independence and burn Kings Landing to the ground. The North was hers, and having to know that a man like Robert Baratheon claimed it to be hers rubbed her exactly the wrong way.

Moat Cailin, when it came into view, was a decrepit old thing. Half fallen away, broken and haunted with summer mists that chased their way through the trees that stabbed their way out of the dark waters. Their were tumbles of stone that had slid halfway sunken into the marsh around them. Anne had never seen anything quite like it.

She remembered, vague and unpleasantly soured by her first mothers perfumed smiles and bitter, powdered pill oatmeal, a night when they lived in louisiana. They had never stayed long. They couldn't afford to, or someone might get too suspicious about the two deathly ill children with doctors notes as long as their arms. They moved once every three years, but from the time they were five to the time they were eight they lived in Louisiana, just outside of Montworth. There wasn't a swamp in the backyard, but there were trees that hung low and heavy with spanish moss.

It whispered with the winds and danced like ghosts in the dark nights.

Anne had been afraid of them, clinging to his mother and brother and crying when the wind picked up, thinking they were phantoms come to take her life.

Now, as she rode through the marshes with a different parents and a different brother she was no longer afraid. Why should she be? They weren't phantoms, for all the Crannogmen seemed to act like them, and all the Ironborn knew them as devils.

Anne was excited to meet Meera, and Howland, the man that had allowed his daughter to fight and hunt and _live_.

She had wanted to stop in Wintertown on the way south, but that plan was dashed now.

All the same, it could wait for another time. This, she was much more excited for.

They were met at the edge of the causeway by a flat bottomed boat that had appeared out of nowhere. Sitting inside were three show, tough looking people with curling hair and strange green and grey clothes that reminded Anne vaguely of a gilly suit.

Smart. Hard to track. Good folk to have on your side, and the loyal Reeds were sword to the Starks, and Howland was one of her fathers greatest friends.

Once the boats came into view, the horses were abandoned to be taken to Torrhen's Square, and the three of them ghosted into the trees of the marshes of the Neck. The trees hung low and the humidity rose until even Anne, northwoman that she was, started to feel the cold.

She always hated humidity.

It made her feel sticky, and gross, and unclean. It reminded her too much of the years outside of montworth, with poison in her blood and a head as foggy as the swamp.

The greenness of the swamp closed in slowly around them, and the rest of the world disappeared in a curtain of fog, moss, and tall, stubborn trees.

* * *

Taro hadn't always had a talent for violence.

He wasn't born with it. So few people ever were. He was born with a talent for music, but that was for queers and people who didn't know how to use a shovel. Violence, that was something that he learned. Pain, and then hatred, and the only way to get rid of that hatred was to lash out, to hurt other people. It would drain, like an infection, but the pus always came back and it would never leave that way.

He'd learned that too late. Much, much too late.

By the time he understood that there was no peace in violence it was too late. He was too deep, and too far gone, and the government was shit and he had no one to turn to. His parents? A joke. Friends? Dead and gone.

Everyone else would tell him what he wanted to hear. Or the same things that he had heard over and over and over again.

'Thank you'. 'That was so brave'. 'I could never'.

Lies.

If they were thankful it wasn't thankful enough for him to be sleeping indoors. If it was so brave why had he pissed himself the first time he's stared down the barrel of a gun, why had he puked the first time he'd killed someone? If they could never why was the world so filled with people who did?

Everyone lied to him, except for Anne.

She told him, right away, what she wanted from him. What she expected of him. And what he would get if he listened to her.

For Anne, for her honesty, he killed. It was easier than killing in the desert on a lie stuttered out by an idiot who didn't know what 'nuclear' even meant.

Taro had not been born with a talent for violence.

Joff had.

He had a head that moved faster than his hands, instincts that rivalled even the most experienced of the Kings Guard. He took advantages of weaknesses and in the training yard he was without mercy. It was the dread of every squire and even the shorter knights to face him.

His mother said, proudly, that it was inherited from his father, and if the rest of the court that was Robert so be it.

Joff knew better.

What he did came from years of practice.

He missed, sometimes, the days when he could walk into a room full of assholes who thought they were hot shit, say his name, and watch them piss themselves and run.

Most times, though, he was glad for it. Otherwise he wouldn't have been about to tote Myrcella around and show her off to all the Lords and Ladies, and brag about how sweet she was, how high she could count, that she was going to be an amazing queen.

He was reminded, gently and often, that he would be king and she would be princess.

He ignored all of them.

When he was five, he decided that his handwriting was nice enough to start writing letters to his kinsmen.

He began with the ones he saw the least of. The Baratheons of Dragonstone, with his uncle Stannis having gone to tend to his castle full time and his daughter only some few months in the past. Even when he'd been in the capital, Joff had seen little of him.

_Stannis Baratheon, of Dragonstone. _

_Hello uncle. I wished you were in Kingslanding more often so I might see you and your family more often. I've heard dragonstone is all black and looks like its made of dragons. Is it frightening? How did you catch it? Does it have any secret passages? _

_Joff _

He didn't care much about Stannis. He really did have the personality of a lobster. But he was supposedly family, and Joff was getting better at acting.

_Selyse Baratheon of Dragonstone, _

_Hello aunt! I know uncle leaves you to run his keep while he is away, so he must trust you quite a lot. I heard you had a daughter a few years ago. I hope she can come visit me and Myrcella sometimes. Or maybe we'll visit you. _

_Joff _

_Shireen Baratheon of Dragonstone, _

_You may not be old enough to read this yet, or maybe you're a genius and you can, but I'm your cousin, Joffrey. You can call me Joff, all family does. What do you do on Dragonstone? Are there other people your age there? When you come to court, I want to show you the gardens. I bet you don't have any of those on Dragonstone. _

_Joff _

Renly was always at Court, even though he was technically the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands, he was only fourteen. At sixteen he would tour his holdings, march off to rule his lands, but Joff had a feeling that he didn't like Storms End.

He'd never spoken of it, but every one knew that he'd spent a whole year in the Siege of Storms End. They'd been attacked, harried, and starved to the point of eating rats. They had almost eaten each other, too, before the Onion Knight had saved their lives.

Taro knew the kind of damage that could cause to a child. It had taken years of him constantly feeding River, promising her she wouldn't go hungry, at least for long, and not without him doing the same. It had taken until he'd brought her out into the woods and showed her how to skin an elk before she finally stopped stocking cans of mandarin oranges like a goddamn squirrel.

Taro hadn't been a whole lot better after he'd got back from overseas, but even the war didn't compare to what his own mother had done.

He started his next letter.

_Tywin Lannister of Casterly Rock. _

He stopped. Tywin was a proud man. He would probably prefer being referred to as 'Lord of Casterly Rock'. Oh well.

_Grandfather. Mother tells me often of her home, your great rock keep and its impossible defenses. She's told me about Lannisport, and her time growing up as a lady. Uncle Jaime has told me about the training you put him through, and how you ensured his position now. Uncle Tyrion mentions little of you. Everyone speaks your name with reverence, and thinks you the cleverest man in Westeros. If I am to be King, I suppose I must be cleverer still, or lose my throne. With luck I inherited more than your hair! _

_Joff_

That should be a good enough start. Joff was well aware that he wasn't a very charismatic person. He was brutally good at his job, he was kind when he was able, but he hadn't drawn people to him like magnets. If a civil war broke out, he had no idea what would happen.

He knew his first instinct.

Sneak into their holds in the dead of night and kill everyone before they knew he was there. Walk in the front door and cut down anyone who got close enough and hunt his enemies down.

That was what Taro would have done.

But Joff didn't think he could do that here. He didn't have the magic he'd been given by his love. He'd left that behind to his daughter. He didn't have decades worth of reputation and fear to clear half the way. He had guards, and soldiers, but he had never liked sending other people to do his dirty work. It left him with his skin crawling unpleasantly.

So he needed to talk to his family. To endear himself, or at least keep reminding them that they were family. Whichever one worked best.

* * *

Qohor had strange coins, Dany thought.

They were triangles, with a great goat sitting in the middle of the coin. Dany always thought it was funny, how different places made different coins to use. Jazz had taught her lots of coins over the years. For Volantis and Lys, and Qohor too. It was a nice enough city, but Dany had seen lots of cities in her young life. The only really interesting thing about Qohor was the street magicians, and those were all fakes. Jazz liked to lean down and whisper to her about what they were doing and how they did it. Flash papers and hidden sleeves and misdirection. Dany didn't think there was anything Jazz didn't know.

She wouldn't need the Qohor coin for much longer though. Jazz told her that where they were going coins weren't worth much of anything. Still, she would use this one, and the other ones in her purse, to buy a horse for the journey.

It was the first time she was being allowed to pick her own mount.

Viserys was pink with envy, he'd been a teenager before he'd been allowed his pick, but Dany had ridden more horses, and was better in the eastern saddles than her young older brother was already. She made sure not to mention though, or Viserys would get mad and yell and wave his arms around. He never struck her. She'd seen brothers strike sisters before, and neither of her brothers had ever laid an unkind hand on her. They loved her.

Dany walked by Jazz in the horse market, watching the big animals mill around in their sturdy pens. There were browns, greys, and black horses all around her. Jazz had a bright eyed mare, and Viserys kept his dun in good condition. Dany climbed up on top of an overturned crate so she could see the horses better, her lilac eyes narrowed in concentration. She kept her hair, once silver but now an eye catching red, tied firmly behind her ears in tight twists that wouldn't come easily undone. It was short enough she could have been mistaken as a boy from a distance.

Up higher, she could see the horsemen walking in front of gates, talking to customers, showing off hoofs and teeth and eyes to their potential buyers. Most of the horses were in good shape. There were some older destriers standing tall amongst the rest, but they were not what Dany looked for.

She kept her eyes sharp for a refined head with mostly a straight profile, and long ears first. Once she found those she looked for a long back, lightly muscled, coupled to a flat croup and long, upright neck. Sloping shoulders would ensure a smooth ride, too.

She found them. Their fur wasn't shiny, kicked up by the dust and sweat of other horses, but once she saw the head she knew they were what she was looking for. Dany jumped down and ran into the crowd, Jazz weaving behind her quickly.

Viserys was back at the small apartment they'd taken in Qohor, along with the three girls. _Expendables, _Jazz called them. A word in a language that Dany didn't understand. They were like her handmaids, Jazz had told her once. Young girls, her age, to tend to her and take care of her. Tish and Keladry, two girls that Jazz had found on the streets two years ago. They were desperate, bruised, and hungry, with gaunt, hollowed faces and sunken eyes.

It had taken almost this whole time for them to trust the three siblings. Only in the last month had Tish told Dany how Jazz had found them in the first place. They were both born in a pleasure house, and their mothers had given up to the madames to be raised there. They'd grown up together, along with a handful of other girls from when the moon teas failed or their mothers were foolish, or those that were simply sold off. Neither of them had wanted the life, so they had run. They'd been forced into stealing for food, and when they were caught the punishment was to lose a hand.

Jazz could talk a cat out of it's coat, and he'd managed to get them away from the guards and offered them a place at the Targaryens table, as long as they didn't mind working for it. Regular work, women's work. Not what they would have had to do in the pleasure houses.

Dany didn't know exactly what happened there. Anything called a 'pleasure house' sounded like it would be fun to her. But people talked about the 'whores' inside of them with revolt or something far worse, older men with leering smiles.

Viserys had gone to one once, and sworn her to secrecy so Jazz didn't find out. Dany was sure Jazz knew anyhow, but she'd kept her word and not told on him.

Tish and Keladry shared a horse between them, a spotted gelding that could take them halfway across the continent without stopping, and manned the mule that carried their belongings. They rarely kept much of value, besides food and water. Jazz always found a way to get more money wherever they went, and they left their old money behind in the houses and apartments.

Or, as Dany was about to do, spent it before they left. Strong hands grasped her skinny hips and she was lifted up, onto Jazz's shoulder. His once pake hair was dark green, almost black. They were pretending to be from Tyrosh, so her hair was a stunning pink with purple at the ends. Dany had liked Tyrosh. There were so many colors and bright people about, and everyone was friendly to her in the streets they'd lived in.

"That one," she said to Jazz, pointing to the horse in the center of the rest. Her head curved in Dany's direction, as if summoned by her voice. Dark brown, with darker still around the mouth. The coat lightened into a rich amber around the sides and back, before fading back into the darkness. Deep brown eyes watched Dany with a gentle intelligence. Horses were smarter than people, she thought sometime. She didn't tell Viserys such things, or even Jazz. They would think she was silly.

"You sound so sure, sweetling. Did you see her hoofs? Her teeth?" he challenged. Dany cringed. She'd gotten so caught up in finding the right shape she'd forgotten age and feet. Still, Jazz got the attention of the horse merchant and asked to see the faded mare. Ombre, Dany thought. Like the hair. Fading from one color to another. Ombre.

She climbed from Jazz's shoulder to the ground, standing with him while he showed her the animals teeth, how to see how smooth they were and check for sanding. The hoofs, too, were sound and no stones or thorns were in the delicate flesh within the semi-circle they made.

Dany was clever enough to realize that Jazz was at once teaching her about horses, and showing to the tradesman that they would not be easily fooled by any flattery that he laid at their feet. Viserys was bad at seeing when he was being played, something Jazz scolded him for often. Dany tried to do her brothers proud. She tried to be smart. She wanted to be strong and powerful, like Visenya. She wanted to be sweet and loved like Rhaenys.

Jazz had teased her once that if they were as their ancestors were then he was Rhaenys, Viserys was Visenya, and she was Aegon himself.

Dany thought Jazz was crazy. Viserys had rolled his eyes, but hadn't butted into the talk.

"Twelve gold," the horseman said at last, breaking Dany from her musings. She was not a dragon rider, but a horse was good enough for her.

Jazz gave him a very calm stare. "Eight."

"A rip off!" the man barked. "Eleven and none lower!"

Dany bit her lip. She tugged at the tradesman's pant leg, drawing his eyes down to her. She held up her purse to him, mostly copper and silver. She wasn't the best at sums, but she was almost certain that she had enough to make ten gold total.

"Please, sir?" she widened her violet eyes at him. Before her his disposition cracked, crumbled, and finally he let out a sigh. He took the bag from her and opened it, counting through the coins. His brows furrowed before, at last, he nodded.

"It'll do girly. But don't go us'n those babe-eyes for sour dealin's, hear me? The gods look down on it."

"I won't," she promised seriously, though she wasn't sure she knew what he meant. She did know it meant that she got the horse. The mare was brought out of the pen with the others and Dany introduced herself politely, blowing into her nostrils. The velvet of her nose pressed against Dany's cheek, making her giggle, until Jazz scooped her up again. He deposited her soundly on the horses bare back and grasped the lead rope.

"What will you call her, sweetling?" Jazz asked, tugging the mare along carefully. They squeezed between people, moving through the marketplace until they popped out of the city entirely. Viserys and the girls stood outside, next to the road, waiting for them. Dany had thought they would go back to the apartment, but they were leaving already. Her lemon seeds pressed against her skin under her split skirt, breeches underneath protecting her from the bare back riding.

"Ombre," Dany decided at last, running her fingers through the mares black mane.

"Ombre," Jazz nodded, once. "Alright. She'll carry you on our journey. Be ready, sweetling, and you too, V, girls," Jazz added, picking up his voice as they drew near. "We're about to go to very dangerous places."

_Dangerous, _Dany thought_. How dangerous? Our lives are already in danger_.

How dangerous was Vaes Dothrak?


End file.
